Strange Occurrences, Curious Questions

I have two important questions to ask on two events that happened concerning Taraba State during the week. One is on the visit to Taraba State by Lt. General Abdulrahman Dambazau and the other, on the controversial front page editorial comment of Daily Trust newspaper of Monday July 3. Both of them aroused a lot of curiosity during the week. But first, let’s honour the two illustrious sons of the state, Danbaba Suntai, former governor, and Sylvanus Yakubu Giwa, Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Media and Publicity, who died.

Giwa was buried on Saturday, July 1, in Takum, his home town. It was a befitting funeral ceremony attended by Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku, his wife, Anna and virtually all members of the State Executive Council and many political stalwarts from across the state.

Giwa’s professional colleagues from various parts of the country were also there to honour him. In a speech at the burial church service in Takum, Governor Ishaku described Giwa as very hard working and somebody who was always eager to learn from his mistakes on the job when pointed out to him. He urged the family accept Giwa’s untimely passage with fortitude and asked Tarabans to pray for the repose of the souls of the two eminent personalities. Burial arrangements for Suntai has already commenced in earnest. A burial committee is working with his family to ensure a successful state burial promised by the government.

In the midst of all these, Governor Ishaku found time to attend to other matters that are of paramount interest to the state. On Friday June 30, Governor Ishaku received in audience a Federal Government delegation led by General Abdulrahman Danbazau, minister of Interior, which came into the state in connection with the recent communal crisis in Mambilla, in Sardauna Local Government Area of the state.

The minister’s visit was a big question mark on the sincerity and impartiality of the Dambazau’s Ministry of Interior. Why, for example, did similar crisis in the state and elsewhere in which the Fulani attackers had the upper hand against their targeted communities not attract such visitation from Dambazau? Why this one?

Governor Ishaku, in his remarks said the events in Mambilla were unfortunate but noted with happiness that the crisis had been contained and that government’s efforts to sustain peace achieved there had been successful. “I’m happy that Mambilla is now calm. What remains is the healing process which has already started”, Ishaku said. He said there had been eight of similar communal crisis in two years but none attracted similar federal delegation and intervention

on how similar crisis could be aaverted in future. He expressed happiness at the coming of the minister to the state in connection

with the crisis and advised Nigerian leaders to endeavour to live up to the expectations of the people. He noted that the situation in

which all money at the disposal of the state government is drained by the control of crises was unacceptable and urged the people to embrace peace.

Ishaku called for extra effort on the part of leaders to achieve unity through national integration. He said the quest for national unity was part of the reason the National Youth Service Corps was introduced and suggested the extension of corps members’ service period from one to two years with the introduction of participants to military training.

On Monday July 3, an important milestone was reached in the state with the flag-off of the Save One Million Lives Project. The project is in furtherance of the state government’s determination to extend healthcare services to a lot more people. The flag-off featured the distribution of medical equipment and consumables and drugs to primary healthcare institutions in the state. It is the first time in the history of the state that such items were procured on such a large scale and distributed. The items included assorted drugs, mosquito nets, delivery kits, cool boxes, generators, solar refrigerators, Android Phones, Hilux 4WD vehicles, motorcycles, tricycles and more.

Speaking at the event, Governor Ishaku said the achievement recorded so far by his administration in two years have left nobody in doubt that the health sector occupies a prominent place on his rescue agenda and this will remain so. “I wish to reiterate here that so long as I remain the captain of the rescue mission in the state, health remains on the priority list and will continue to enjoy priority attention because without good health life becomes meaningless for the people.”

The Governor later handed out the items to officers representing various health institutions in the state. Dr Innocent Vakkai, Commissioner for Health praised Governor Ishaku for his passion for the health sector in the state which has translated into regular and massive support for projects in the sector. “Our Governor is passionate about the health and well being of the people. This has manifested in the series of flag-offs including the renovation of hospitals, supply of drugs, recruitment of health officers and many of the other requirements of the sector,” he said.

During the week also, Government House reacted to the front page editorial comment of Daily Trust newspaper of Monday July 3, 2017 which sought to portray the recent communal crisis in Mambilla as a case of genocide and ethnic cleansing. In the editorial, titled “Genocide in Mambilla”, the paper took a biased position in favour of the Fulani side of the crisis by using inflated casualty figures provided by the Fulani leaders in the crisis as basis for its analysis and conclusions. A Government House press statement issued on Tuesday rejected what it described as the” deliberate and callous attempt by unpatriotic elements to tag the Mambilla crisis as genocide” noting emphatically that “the recorded casualty figures of 18 human lives as announced by the police and other security agencies that brought the fighting to an end obviously do not support that evil name-tag.”

The government urged Nigerians to ignore the biased and misleading position canvassed in the editorial and wondered why Daily Trust failed to label as genocide and ethnic cleansing the massacre by Fulani of the people in Southern Kaduna a few months ago. “The newspaper’s curious silence and failure to label the massacre a few months ago of indigenes of Southern Kaduna by the Fulani as a case of genocide and ethnic cleansing has apparently exposed the partisan direction of Daily Trust’s editorial standpoint on issues in which the interest of its pay masters are involved.” an obvious case of genocide perpetrated against the people of Southern Kaduna